Finding the collects, canticle antiphons , readings and responsories from August to November: a guide

One of the ongoing sources of confusion in the Office at this time of the year relates to the two separate sequences of Sundays at work.

Accordingly, I thought I'd devote a couple of posts to explaining where to find the relevant moving parts of the Office, and then, for those interested, a bit of the history behind it (which is alas, a classic example of the human tendency to increase the complexity of things over time!).

But first, the mechanics of navigating the Office from August to November.

Note that I'm only talking about the Benedictine Office here, though the same principles apply to the Roman.

Finding the moveable parts of the Sunday Office

For most of the year, the canticle antiphons for Saturdays and Sundays, as well as the collects, can all be found located together in the 'of time' (temporale) section of an Office book - in the Monastic Diurnal and Breviary, that is the first main section of the book.

Between August and November each year though, there are actually two different sequences of Sundays in play: those relating to the calendar month; and those relating to the number of Sundays after Pentecost.  And the texts relating to these two separate sequences found in two different parts of the temporale.

The short version is, if you are using the Diurnal, the Saturday Vespers Magnificat antiphon is of the calendar month Sunday, in a sequence starting at page 451*, while the collect and Sunday Lauds and Vespers canticle antiphons are of the Sunday after Pentecost, in a sequence starting at page 461*.

If you use my Ordo (and next year's will be available shortly from Lulu as usual), the page numbers for each Sunday are set out in it.

For those who are learning Matins, want to understand in more depth, or work it all out for themselves, the long version is set out below. 

Matins on Sundays

When it comes to Sunday Matins each week, between August and November there essentially three sets of moving parts, viz:

• Nocturn I&II readings of the relevant Sunday of the calendar month;
• responsory sets for all three Nocturns relating to the book(s) of the Bible being read in Nocturn I; and
• Nocturn III readings, Gospel and collect of the relevant Sunday after Pentecost. 

The impact on the day hours is that the Magnificat antiphon for Saturday Vespers relates to the calendar month cycle, while the collect and canticle antiphons for Sunday Lauds and Vespers relate to the Sunday after Pentecost.

a) The 'calendar' Sunday: Saturday Vespers and Sunday Matins Nocturns 1&2

In essence, the Magnificat antiphons for Saturday Vespers are generally taken from, or relates to the Scriptural readings for the first Nocturn of Sunday Matins.  

And between August and November, these are for the calendar month, not the Sunday of the liturgical year.

If you are just saying the day hours, this calendar month sequence only affects Saturday Vespers (the Magnificat antiphon) and the September Ember days (which are placed in the third week of the month).

In the diurnal you can find this sequence of antiphons from page 451* onwards.  In volume 2 of the 1963 Monastic Breviary they start at page 112. 

Monastic Diurnal and Breviary: calendar month sequence

Sundays of …	Monastic diurnal page – Saturday Vespers Magnificat antiphon	Monastic Breviary 1963 (vol 2) – Saturday Vespers Magnificat antiphon; Sunday readings for Nocturns 1&2; Sunday responsories for all Nocturns
August	451*	112
September	452*	130
October	457*	156
November	459*	172

b) which Sunday of the month?

 There are three potential traps to note here though.  

The first is that there are rules dictating which Sundays of the month are actually used depends on the number of Sundays that actually occur in the month.  The rules are set out in the Diurnal so you can work it out for yourself, but the alternative is just to consult an Ordo!

The second potential trap is that the '1962' books literally use modern calendar months to calculate which Sunday it is - so the first Sunday in October, for example, can never occur before October 1.  

In the earlier books, though, the Roman calendar system was used to calculate this, and so each year there are some differences (which change each year) between the two sets of books as to which Sunday is said/when it is said.  

For what it is worth, my own view is that although it was one of the sillier simplifications made, there are swings and roundabouts in its net impact that make it not worth worrying much about.  

For those who beg to differ though, or want to consider the topic in more depth, I recommend the annual rant (I mean dissertation!) on the subject by by Mr Dipippo over at New Liturgical Movement.

And the third point to note is that the last Sunday of October is always the feast of Christ the King - but for reasons I don't understand, the breviary and Diurnal put this not in the temporale section, but in the sanctorale....

c) The responsory sets

The third moving part affected by these calendar convolutions only affects Matins, and relates to the responsories, so you can ignore this one if you are only using the Diurnal!

For most of the year, the responsories (essentially meditations on/summaries of the readings) used at all three Nocturns on Sundays relate to the particular book or group of books of the Bible being read (in Nocturn I).  

As a new book is started, a new set of responsories starts.  

In some cases, the same responsory set is used for several weeks - the longest usually being those for Kings/Chronicles in the weeks after Trinity Sunday up until the end of July.  But equally, some are only used for one (such as for Tobit, for Sunday 3 of September) or two weeks.  The table below summarises the books read in this period. 

Sunday(s)	Books read	First responsory of the set	No of unique responsories in the set*
Dom II post Pent to end July	Kings	Preparate corda vestra	11
August 1-5	Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus	In principio	11
Sept 1&2	Job	Si bona	11
Sept 3	Tobit	Peto Domine	9**
Sept 4	Judith	Adonai	8**
Sept 5	Esther	Domine mi Rex	4**
Oct 1-4	Maccabees	Adaperiat	11
November 1	Ezekiel	Vidi dominum	14
November 3	Daniel
November 4&5	Minor prophets

*The last responsory on all Sundays after Pentecost is Duo Seraphim.

** The remaining responsories needed to reach the necessary 11 are taken from other sets in the month.

Where the same set of responsories is reused for several weeks, some books, most notably the Gower Matins books, save space by only list them out once.  The table below provides a key on where to find the relevant sets.

From Sunday II after Pentecost to Advent: Gower book page numbers

Sundays	Nocturns I&II readings	Nocturn III readings/Gospel (of the Sunday after Pentecost	Responsories
Easter to September volume
Second Sunday after Pentecost (to last Sunday of July)	Pg 174 ff (of the Sunday after Pentecost)	Pg 240 ff	Pg 235 ff
August	Pg 223 ff (of the Sunday of the calendar month)	Pg 240 ff	August: pg 238
September to Christmas volume
September	Pgs 1 – 72 (and responsories)	Pgs 84 - 119	For Nocturn III only: September Sundays 1&2: 72 September 3: 74 September 4: 75 September 5:76
October	Pg 23 ff		(Ns I, II&III):76 ff
November	pg 35 ff (including weekday readings)		Pg 78-83 (including weekdays)

d) Sundays after Pentecost: Matins Nocturn III, Sunday Lauds and Vespers canticle antiphons, and the collect

The second sequence of Sundays are those of the liturgical year, viz the Sundays after Pentecost, and most particular their Gospels (which are those used at the Extraordinary Form Mass).

So far as the day hours go, these provide the Benedictus and Magnificat antiphons for Sunday Lauds and Vespers, and the collect for the week, starting at page 461* in the Diurnal, or page 217 in the Breviary.

For Matins, the Third Nocturn readings, Gospel and collect can be found under the relevant Sunday after Pentecost entry.

There are two potential traps here.

The first is that where a (Class I) feast is said instead of the Sunday, the collect of the Sunday after Pentecost that would have been said is still used during the week.

The second is that there are only texts for twenty-four Sundays after Pentecost, whereas in practice there are actually usually more than that - in 2026 for example, there are 26 Sundays.  

For these extra Sundays, the clock essentially stops at the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, and fills the gap before the ('24th' and) last Sunday after Pentecost with the 'Sundays remaining after Epiphany' (ie left over from the beginning of the year).

The table at the beginning of the Diurnal tells you how many Sundays after Pentecost there are each year, and how to calculate which 'Sundays remaining' to use, but again, consulting an Ordo is simpler!

History of the reading and calendar system

So how did this rather complex system actually come to be?

The answer lies in a series of reforms of both the liturgical calendar and Matins reading cycle dating back to the eighth century, on which more anon.